by Dan Taylor
“Exactly.”
“Still not moving a muscle.”
“I just want to take a piss, Jake. I haven’t since Denny’s.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Go ahead. Knock yourself out. I’ll be okay here on the sofa.”
“Just get up, before I start counting to three.”
“What comes on three?”
“One…”
I get up, my hands raised. Instead of turning my back to him, I walk backwards and he follows. Every so often I snatch glances behind me, until we make it to the bathroom.
Standing directly in front of the toilet, with the gun pointed at me, he starts fumbling with the button on his pants with his free hand. After ten seconds or so of this, he breathes heavily through his nose. “Fuck, you’re going to have to give me a hand with this. And no funny business.”
“No way. Can’t you just pull them down without undoing the button?”
“Definitely not. Buttons on pants have a habit of popping off with me. You’re going to have to do it.”
I curse under my breath, then reach down, my legs bent, back arched. He keeps the rifle pointed at my face, which impairs my view. I don’t want to, but I have to kneel down in front of him. Still no luck. The button must be the wrong size, or something. Fuck knows why, but I start making conversation. “Are these pants tailored?”
And so does he. “Why do you ask?”
“The button’s a bitch.”
“Bought these at Macy’s.”
“Weird.”
“Right?”
“There we go.”
I stand up, back off, hands raised.
He says, “Turn around.”
“No way.”
“Not this again.”
“We’re all adults here.”
“Okay then.”
He pulls down his pants, and I look away while he pulls down his briefs…or whatever style of underwear he has on.
When I look back, he’s sitting on the toilet, like a hulking, hideous lady.
I try to show no reaction, but I’m pretty sure one of my eyebrows is raised.
He says, “What? Did you think I was going to turn my back to you?”
We wait…and wait.
“Say, Jake, can you run the tap for me? I’ve got stage fright.”
I reach over to the sink, turn on the faucet.
It does the trick, and I never thought I’d be as happy as this to hear the sound of another man’s urine flowing freely.
With the piss comes the awkward small talk.
He starts it this time. “So what did Charles say to you while you were in that car with him all that time?”
And I can’t help but answer. It’s the pissing. The God damn pissing. “He wanted me to torture you.”
He laughs, and his piss is flowing more freely. “Hell, if you’d have told me that, there would’ve been no need for the faucet!”
“I’m glad I could help.”
“So why did he want you to torture me?”
“He wanted me to find out how you’re connected. What you’re doing here.”
His eyebrows narrow. “So you really don’t know anything?”
“If I did, I would’ve told you. I quite like having my brains on the inside of my skull. It’s this weird thing I have.”
He doesn’t respond, just grimaces as he forces out the last couple drops. Without warning, he stands, and I get a glance of his miserable, shriveled uncircumcised penis.
I look away, and he pulls up his briefs and pants. He manages to button his pants with his one free hand.
I reach over, get the soap, and hold it out like a bathroom attendant, the faucet still running.
Now it’s his turn to raise an eyebrow. “Which one do you think I am, Laurel or Hardy? Turn off the God damn faucet.”
I make a mental note to tell my cleaner, Margarita, to pay special attention to the bathroom and every door handle in the apartment next Thursday.
I turn off the faucet and he motions with the rifle for me to go out of the bathroom. I back up, hands in the air, until I clumsily sit back down on the sofa. He resumes his position on the sofa chair.
We sit in silence a minute. I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be talking or if he’s just thinking of what to say.
I say, “So are we just going to sit here?”
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“About whether my sitting here with a rifle pointed at your face is a coincidence.”
“You came in here on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Not that.”
“Then what?”
“I’m thinking about this whole you-torturing-me thing.”
I don’t say anything.
“And about this lie he told you, about the wallet and not knowing that much about me.”
“Theodore…Kevin, this would make more sense to me if I knew why you’re following me, and what your involvement in this thing is.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too. Whether or not it would be advantageous or not to tell you.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
He gives a wry smile at this, motions with his hand to toss over the whisky bottle. I do.
He takes a long pull. “The first thing you should know is that I used Charles to get to you.”
“Okay.”
“And that I was using you to get to Omar and Regan.”
“Okay.”
“And that at some point I had planned on putting a bullet in your head.”
“Okay…”
“Don’t take it personally, Jake. In all your heads. When the necessary actions had been taken.”
I decide to just jump in and swim. “Theodore, Kevin, who are you?”
He mulls the question over, then says, “Okay, Jake. I’ve decided I’m going to take a punt on you.”
35.
Story of Theodore, Kevin, whatever the hell his name is, in the words of Jake Hancock…
KEVIN LONGFOOT STARTED his life as one of those English boys who dress a little like girls, in London. He was the son of a rich entrepreneur by the name of Keith O’Cain and of Nancy Longfoot, a woman who was as poor as she was big-breasted. They lived a simple…well, not a simple life, as Keith O’Cain was a man who mistook whisky for water, and who considered a commitment to a woman like that of a classic car. It got a nice polish and drive on Sundays, but it was otherwise left ignored.
Keith O’Cain, as well as dabbling in legitimate business, also dabbled in illegitimate underground dealings with a pair of hardened West End thugs by the names of Clifford and Elwood Abbott, who were surprisingly of no relation to each other. A deal went sour, landing Keith O’Cain in hot water with the Abbott boys. Something about a boatload of low-grade Jamaican brick-packed bush weed and a whore called Lola. Anyway, the Abbott boys had been a force to be reckoned with in London. They were known for their sadistic violence against those who crossed them, and for their calling-card torture of removing men’s earlobes. They had been implicated in numerous London killings, due to Clifford’s insistence on said torture technique, but had avoided being indicted.
To cut a long story short, they were pissed, and the earlobes of Keith, Nancy, and little Kevin had the shelf life of a glass of week-old milk in a sauna.
Fearing for his family’s lives, Keith O’Cain relocated them not to Paris or Amsterdam or any other thriving European city, but to a part of Zimbabwe where the price of a goat often was the price of a man’s life.
Here they lived a simple life…well, actually, they didn’t. Keith had planned on turning his hand to farming. But the soil was near barren, so all he could farm was Jatropha Curcas or tobacco. He chose the one he was aware of and the one that would bring him the greatest riches. It did bring him riches, but also the attention of other tobacco farmers. In particular the Mumzeaby clan, a family of rifle-wielding, gap-toothed mad dogs, whose idea of diplomacy was something really funny and absurd.
Kevin grew up homeschooled, by his mom. Keith was so successful you could’ve probably attributed seventy percent of lung cancer cases between the years of 1970 and 1980 in England to his tobacco sales. What a life they lived, and free from earlobe-removing cockneys to boot.
But it all turned sour, as things tended to do in Keith O’Cain’s life.
The Mumzeaby clan had a single daughter, Rufaro, who was about the same age as Kevin. They became friends, and once Kevin had come of age, and once she had developed nipples that poked through her sack-cloth clothing even on the warmer days of the Zimbabwean summers, they ended up rolling in the hay together, literally.
They kept it a secret from both their families, until one night, after Keith O’Cain’s family had dined on a questionable cut of goat meat and contracted a vomiting virus. Kevin spoke about it in between vomiting, while in the throes of feverish hallucinations.
“Couldn’t you just have fucked one of the goat herder’s daughters?” Keith O’Cain asked, immediately after finding out.
To which Kevin replied, “Urghhhh.”
And his mother, though the verbiage may be not quite accurate, replied, “Omigod, eww!”
Kevin was banished from the family. He moved over to the States, started work as a Bible salesman and forgot about his family, by and large. That is, until, shortly after his fifty-second birthday, he received news that his father had been shot at long range, by one of the Mumzeaby clan.
He flew over for the funeral, buried his father in his favorite tobacco field—well, not quite his favorite, as Keith O’Cain was a shrewd businessman even in death. He stayed with his mother a few weeks, providing the shoulder she cried onto. Then traveled back to the States.
He had no idea that there had been a fuckup in the bureaucracy surrounding his father’s death. So he got on with his life as usual.
But only until he overheard a warring couple in a Hollywood bar discussing the misappropriation of the fraudulent estate of his father. He wanted to rip their earlobes off then and there, but he bided his time. Did some digging. Found out that some drug lord, loosely related to Keith O’Cain, from Keith’s days when he’d sewn more than his tobacco seeds in various African fields, was using the fuckup of Keith O’Cain’s death certification to launder drug money.
He wouldn’t have his father’s legacy soiled by this act. Nor would he let those responsible get away with it. He learned of the drug lord’s plan to kidnap the warring couple, who were set to inherit the money in the name of his father, and appropriated firearms from a reputable dealer whom he didn’t kill. Maybe. He was hell-bent on eliminating every source of the story that would besmirch his father’s legacy, and then he would turn his talents to the drug lord and his henchmen in Africa.
Which brings us to now…
36.
I SAY, “SO you just snapped, like that?” I click my fingers.
He raises an eyebrow. “Did you even listen to the story, Jake?”
“I zoned out in between the bits about the African girl’s nipples and the fun stuff with the guns and the drug lords.”
“What bit about the nipples? And it’s singular, drug lord. This is my father’s life’s work we’re talking about. I failed him in life, but I won’t in death.”
“How romantic. So what, you’re just going to put a bullet in everyone? Including me, some guy who just happens to be caught in the middle of this?”
“Especially you, if you don’t learn to watch that mouth of yours.”
“Why does everyone keep on saying that?”
“Because you’re a cocky little prick.”
“Fair enough.”
We sit in silence. He drinks; I think about why he told me that story.
I say, “So I take it you’re not going to put a bullet in my head.”
He sends me a curious look, eyebrows narrowed, eyes shining with inquisitiveness. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“I figured that you wouldn’t bother to tell me a long story like that, if you were going to shoot me straight afterwards.”
“Maybe I just wanted you to know about the man who was going to kill you, so that I could sleep better at night. A man said something similar to me right before I shot him.”
“Why did you? Shoot him, I mean.”
“Because he was standing at the start of a long trail that could lead to me. Plus, he had terrible taste in furniture.”
We both laugh, like old friends.
When we settle down, I say, all serious, “So, are you going to shoot me?”
Carrying on the joke, he looks around at the apartment’s décor, says, “Nah.” Then after a pause, “Say Jake, go and get a glass so that we can drink together.”
I do. He puts the rifle down just for a second as he pours the glass, and just for a moment, I think about taking it. But it was only out of his grasp as long as it took to think about grabbing it.
He says cheers in some language I’ve never heard, his pronunciation of the weird vowel sound in the middle giving me the impression he’s fluent in the language. We air-chink the glasses and drink.
As though I asked him again, he says, “Nah…I’m not going to shoot you, you dumb son of a bitch.”
I ask, “So are we going to work together on this?”
“I was going to use you all along to get to everyone I need. Seems we’d be better off working together to get this done. I think you could help.”
“I’m not going to help you kill my ex-wife, if that’s what you’re asking. As much as I’m tempted.”
“That isn’t what I’m asking. We work together to get to Charles and that dumb sidekick he has.”
“Terry?”
“If that’s his name, yeah.”
“And then when we’re left with people who I care about. What then?”
He sits back and regards the question, chewing it over. “We cross that bridge when we get to it. Deal?”
I don’t know how we’ll cross the bridge, exactly, but I sure could use this maniac’s help to get to Charles and Terry. I get a bad feeling that crossing the bridge involves blowing my brains out at the last moment. But what other choice do I have? If I don’t help him, he’ll blow my brains out anyway, I figure. So I’m compelled to say, “Deal.”
We sit in silence a moment.
I don’t know where the thought comes from, maybe it’s the taste of the whisky or the breeze from the air conditioning system, but something Charles said reverberates through my thoughts. If you’d have farted tonight, I’d have known how loud it was and if you left a skid mark in your briefs.
Then I take out the phone I was given, rotate it around, inspecting it. I remember Leo saying, This is a pre-paid cell. It hasn’t got a dime on it, and one of our nerds messed with it, made sure that it can’t make any outgoing calls.
At this point, Kevin looks like he’s wondering what the fuck I’m doing. He goes to speak, but I hold a finger up, silencing him. On my bedside table I keep a notepad for the women I bed to write down their number, which I rarely call, and I rush over and get it. Write: Maybe you should shoot at me? Then hold it up for him to read.
He mouths, “Why?”
I write: Just do it.
And without a second thought, he shoots me right in the ankle.
37.
I SQUEAL LIKE a gut-shot pig and hop about on my good foot.
Kevin watches me with curiosity as I emit high-pitched screams of “why, oh why! I don’t want to die! Pleaseeee!”
Then I get up, tread carefully as I can with my ankle on fire, to the sink, where I drop the cell phone I was given by Leo into a half-drunk glass of water.
When bubbles have stopped rising from the interior of the cell, I hobble back over to the sofa, but I can’t sit. Seems better to stand.
I say, “What the hell was that
?”
He frowns.
“I asked you to shoot at me. Not actually shoot me.”
“I think they’re the same thing.”
“There’s not a grammarian in the country who would agree with you.” When I stop speaking, the pain intensifies. “Fuck!” Now I sit down, pull down my sock. I turn the ankle, all covered in blood, towards Kevin. “Do you think I’m going to lose the foot?”
He comes over, a fucking stupid little grin on his face. Kneels down, takes a look at it. “I barely got you.”
“It’s a gun, Kevin! Barely getting me means a hell of a lot!”
“It’s just a scratch. It’ll bleed a lot, but I think you can hold off on sending your application to the Paralympics.”
Being petty, I say, “How very PC of you.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “You got a first aid box lying around?”
“Does this look like a kindergarten to you?”
“That’s beside the point.”
“No…no I don’t have a first aid box.”
Kevin gets up, goes over to the kitchen. He runs the tap, comes back with a damp dishcloth.
“Here,” he says, then throws the dishcloth in my lap. “Clean yourself up with this and have a look to see if you need stitches.”
I shake my head, dab at the wound. Turns out it is just a scratch. The foot will be okay, but the sofa’s a goner. “You’re going to pay for a new sofa.”
“Which flea market did you get it from?”
I shake my head again.
“So the phone was bugged…I sat here and told you everything I was going to do, and he could hear everything.” Kevin’s pissed, which he has no right to be, considering I’m the one with a bullet graze.
“Yep.”
“And now he thinks I’ve shot and killed you, if we’re to assume he believed that amateur-hour acting of yours?”
“Relax. He does.”
“So I’m assuming you’ve got a plan, seeing as though you asked me to shoot you.”
“That’s correct.”
Turns out I don’t. But making Charles think I was dead seemed like a good idea at the time.
“Well…”